


you push and you push and im pulling away

by Dylanobrienisbatman



Series: Prompts [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 2199 radio calls, Canon Compliant, Communication, Confessions, F/M, Love, POV Clarke Griffin, Post 5x06, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 10:17:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14871866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dylanobrienisbatman/pseuds/Dylanobrienisbatman
Summary: Clarke can't let herself feel the way she feels about Bellamy, because theres someone else. So when he holds her, and tucks her hair behind her ear, she finally snaps. Because suddenly, its more.[immediately post 5x06: bellamy caresses clarkes hair and she’s like “we need boundaries, bellamy” and they have a whole angsty convo]





	you push and you push and im pulling away

Clarke could only hear the blood rushing in her ears. The Wonkru fighting pit is spinning around her, shes pretty sure shes about to pass out. Madi went off with Octavia only about 10 seconds ago, but she felt like she’d been standing there for centuries. Her world was collapsing around her, so she might as well collapse along with it. Somewhere that sounded distant, she heard Bellamy arguing with someone, probably one of Octavia’s guards, and then somehow, he caught her as she tipped backwards towards the ground. Just in time, like always. His face over her, his dark hair hanging down around his head, was the last thing she saw before her vision went black.

She woke up in a start.

“Hey you’re alright. You passed out, I caught you.” Bellamy was sitting up against a wall in the fighting pit, and she was lying in a way that made her sure she had had her head across his lap, and the slight sting on her scalp told her that when she had lurched away, his fingers had been in her hair and had gotten trapped.

“Wheres Madi, how long have I been out?” She was still disoriented, but the panicking was rising in her chest again. She sat up fully, pulling her knees into her chest and wrapping her arms around them, next to Bellamy but not facing him. For all the looks she’d sent his way in the last few days, he had only seen one, and that was by accident. She hadn’t meant for him to see her watching him kiss… She kept her eyes forward.

“Its only been about 20 minutes, Octavia took Madi… I don’t know where they wouldn’t tell me.” He sounded strained, like he needed something but couldn’t quite make himself say it.

“And you just SAT here with me? You didn’t go-"

  
“Clarke.” He interrupted her, but his voice was soothing. “I laid you down and literally chased after her, but her guards blocked my way, and she… well there wasn’t anything I could do. I _tried_ to go after her, I promise I tried.”

She tried to stifle her anger but it was coming in waves, close to the boiling point. She thought she might be able to keep it pinned down until she felt his hand come out and tuck a stray tendril of her hair behind her ear, and she snapped.

“Don’t.” She snapped, scooting further away and slapping his hand from her face. The spot where his fingers brushed her cheeks burned and she felt tears welling up in her eyes. She didn’t look at him but she could feel his eyes burning into her skin. He got up, slowly, like he didn’t want to startle her, and walked around to sit directly in front of her. She stared down at her toes.

“Clarke?” He was sitting on his knees, which had to hurt on the hard concrete ground, and his hands were sort of at his side, useless, like he had no idea where to put them, like he wanted to reach towards her, to touch her, but couldn’t. She stayed looking at the floor. “Clarke, could you just…” He groaned, not so much exasperation as it was like he was releasing some kind of heavy weight. She finally looked up.

His eyes were sad, deep brown and mournful, and his expression had this lingering remnant of shock and pain, she’s assuming from her very visceral reaction to his touch. She had never stopped him from touching her before. She had never wanted too. She didn’t even really want to now.

“I don’t… understand. I don’t know whats going on with you. Not about Madi, I understand that. Believe me… i spent 16 years feeling what you’re feeling right now, feeling it every single time a guard came knocking on our door. I just don’t understand why you wont let me help you.”

“Because I’m not yours to help.”

“You’re.. you’re not what?” She had still been avoiding his eyes but he looked astonished, and she finally found his face again. “Clarke… wh-..”

“I’m not yours. You have a family now, and I’m… I’m not part of it” She felt herself heading towards tears, her throat closing around the words. She ignored it and clenched her nails into her palms. “You have Monty and Harper and… and you have… Echo…” the last name is hard to push through her lips, like admitting that she is aware of their relationship out loud would be a confession, “and thats your people. I have Madi. This is my family.. I’m not-“

“Clarke you will always be my family.” His words took her by surprise. “Clarke, the only reason I have any of those people, the only reason I am even here at all, is because of YOU.”

“But I-"

  
“And honestly, Clarke, if you think for a second I wouldn’t do anything to protect that kid, you don’t know me very well.” The words had a hint of teasing too them, but his eyes were bare of humour. He was serious. It took her a moment. Had she really forgotten him, he must be wondering. Had she really lost sight of him so much that she wouldn’t trust him with Madi, with herself? She could feel his heart breaking from the 5 feet of distance between them. She took a breath.

“Of course I don’t think that. Of course I know you. I’ve always known you. Even six years later, you’re not so different. But I just… it IS different now.”

“It’s not.” He was so sure. He was so sure nothing had changed. Maybe for him nothing had. Maybe for him it was still the same, but for her, everything was different. She felt her heart thump against her ribs, like it wanted to leap out and offer itself to him personally. She pulled her legs in tighter to keep it from giving her away.

“It’s different for me.” She barely whispered it, but he heard it. But of course he took it the wrong way. How could he know any better.

“You don’t trust me…” It wasn’t a question, he was stating a fact. But he was wrong.

“No. No Bellamy that’s not.. No. Of course i trust you. You’re… you. You’re everything I…” She couldn’t really figure out what to say, her words tripping over themselves. He sat, shifting onto his tailbone, crossing his legs, tucking his hands into the space in the middle of them, like he needed to contain them. She felt that feeling too. She had never been unable to talk to him. He was BELLAMY. She had talked to him for 6 years. He sat across from her, patient as ever. So intrinsically Bellamy, and yet still a stranger. She finally just spit it out.

“I survived because of you.”

He looked stunned. “I left you here Clarke what do-"

  
“no not like… physically. You are the only reason i stayed sane.”

“Clarke I don’t-“ She hadn’t realised how much he had been saying her name, but every time he did she felt her heart beat throb in her entire body, from her fingers to her toes.

“I talked to you.” Again she could barely get above a whisper. He opened his mouth and closed it again, and again, and then just stopped. “While you were gone, I had this radio, and I would call you every day… I started before I found Madi, as a way of hearing myself speak and not feeling so alone, and then when i found Madi i just… kept going. I didn’t even know you were alive, but I hoped you were, and I talked to you.”

“You called us?”

“No… not “us”, Bellamy,” She said his name, and watched his jaw clench, like he was physically restraining himself from her, “just you.”

“I don’t… I-" She interrupted him, needing the conversation to be over. Needing to get it out, to move past whatever this was. Needing him to be her partner again. This was standing in their way.

“I called you, because you’re my person. But i’m not your person anymore. Echo is your person.” Contrasting herself to his girlfriend felt like the biggest confession in the world, but she couldn’t stop now. “So we need boundaries. You can’t… touch… me, like that. You can’t stroke my hair or hold me in your lap or… you get what I mean. And please don't think that I don't want you too. I want you too, I want you too so badly. Every time you touch me it reminds me that you’re really here, and that I'm not having some kind of shock collar induced fever dream, but you _can’t_. You can't BECAUSE I want you too. Because it… it means something more to me than it does to you." His eyes were huge, and something behind them made her feel exposed. "Or maybe it means the same thing to you as it does to me, I don’t know. But you can’t. Because you have Echo. You’re still my best friend, and I know we need to… communicate more. We need to get to know each other again… but we just… we need these boundaries. I need these boundaries.” She stood up, walking towards the doors he had told her Madi went through. He grabbed her arm, high up and through her jacket. Boundaries, just like she’d asked.

“Clarke… It does mean something to me. What it means to you, it means that to me too.” She studied him, and felt it. She knew it was true. Whatever she felt, she knew he had felt it too, six years and one apocalypse ago. She knew he still felt it.

“But Echo.” She said it with confidence this time. He meant it. He meant that whatever she was to him couldn’t mesh with what he had with Echo, that he couldn't just... ignore what he had with Echo and pretend like everything between them was fine. Because it wasn't fine. Because it was _more_.

“… yeah.”

“We’ll figure it out, Bellamy.” His arm fell to his side, loose and once again almost like he had no idea what to do with it. She had this urge to lean forward and kiss his cheek, or take his hand, or fold herself into his chest and hold him, but she didn’t. Because it meant something. It meant something more. She took a breath, turned away from him, and went to find her daughter.

**Author's Note:**

> the "But Echo" bit is NOT meant to construe that he cares for echo more, its meant to convey that he can't and wont cheat on her, because thats wrong. In the moment, they were basically confessing their love without saying the word, but he is still in a relationship with someone else, and therefore "but echo". He loves Clarke, she knows it, but hes not a cheater and she wouldn't want him to be (a la finn s1). he's not CHOOSING echo, he's just being a good man.


End file.
